Dying Warrior ("Laomedon") from the East Pediment of the Temple of Aphaia

The Iliad tells this older war against Troy in a couple of lines. Herakles came with only six ships and a handful of men, for the horses of Laomedon, king of Troy, and sacked the city. Later writers explain that the king had promised the horses as a reward and then refused to hand them over. The bearded man lying in the left corner of the east gable has long been called Laomedon, struck down by Herakles. Nothing on the statue names him, and the name remains a modern identification.

A gable is a long, low triangle, and its tapering corners leave room only for figures who lie flat. This warrior fills one of them, stretched out almost 1.85 metres, his helmet still on his head and his shield still with him. His right knee is missing.

Casts carried him well beyond Munich. In 1870 the university of Innsbruck in Austria acquired a plaster cast of this figure, among the very first pieces of its collection of casts.